Professional Documents
Culture Documents
RDA: The Coming Cataloguing Debacle
RDA: The Coming Cataloguing Debacle
RDA: The Coming Cataloguing Debacle
demonstration of a new invention. Everyone was impressed by its speed and efficiency, everyone that is but the French delegate. He leaned back in his chair and said: It obviously works in practice but does it work in theory?
Followers of that mans school of thought have hijacked the AngloAmerican cataloguing code revision process and the practical result of their theoretical approach promises to be the biggest disaster to hit descriptive cataloguing since the draft rules of 1941 (the latter consigned justly to the mists of history, but an instructive example of how badly wrong groups of wellintentioned people can be).
bibliographic description (ISBD)the most successful international cataloguing standard everand the creation of the Anglo-American cataloguing rules, Second edition (AACR2)a flawed but fundamentally sound expression of Lubetzkyan principles.
One is the
drive to resolve the problem of cataloguing and giving access to electronic records through the use of metadata applied by non-cataloguers. The simplistic idea is that vast numbers of electronic documents can be catalogued effectively by having their creators apply uncontrolled terms in a few simple categories. In other words, that the results achieved by cataloguing using controlled vocabularies and the bibliographic structures of catalogues
II
complex, labor-intensive, skilled activitiescan be achieved on the cheap and without the use of those essential structures. It is as though a school of cuisine let us call it cuisine dgotantearose that prescribed only seventeen ingredients used randomly in random proportions mixed by people with no knowledge of cooking using random temperatures. It is hard to believe the worlds libraries have taken metadata seriously. Then there is the even more simplistic approach of those who think that the free-text searching used by search engines can substitute for cataloguing. Welcome to the wonderful world of 1,321,957 hits in random orderthose hits having abysmally low recall and relevance ratios (the standard measures of information retrieval systems) good night and good luck! Lastly, there is the attachment on the part of the theoreticians to the document Functional requirements for bibliographic records (acronymized to FRBR). FRBR may have some merit as a way of looking at the theory of cataloguingit has little as a foundational document for creating a cataloguing code. Never mind that the structure of bibliographic records set out in AACR2/ISBD is well established, accepted by scholars and other catalogue users for decades, and with minor flaws in concept and expression that could easily be correctedit works in practice, but does it work in theory?
III
(RDA), a work on which the Joint Steering Committee has labored for a number of years. Did anyone ask why the JSC did not work on updating and revising AACR2? If they did, they were given the usual nonsense about having to reach out to the metadata community, the supposed need to allow the cataloguing of electronic resources (as if AACR2/ISBD were not perfectly and demonstrably capable of accommodating all formats, including electronic documents), and the general Rovian blather that always accompanies excuses for failed policy decisions in this as in wider spheres.
I have studied the drafts of RDA that have been made available and I
am horrified by them, for the following reasons.
general chapter, following the order of the universally accepted ISBD preceded chapters giving details, amplifications, and exceptions for particular kinds of material (books, cartographic materials, music, etc.) and publication patterns (serials) in the same orderan arrangement that had several advantages. There is no good practical reason relating to ease of use by cataloguers or practicality as an instruction tool why this structure has been abandoned in favor of an incoherent hodge-podge of general and special rules on all formats as found in the new draft. Just one example from many: in Chapter 2 Identification of the resource, before there is a single rule on recording the simplest descriptive
IV
data, there are nine pages of detailed, complex, and often redundant introductory instructions. In another example, a basic rule (2.2 Sources of information) contains no general rule and is made up of three specific rules (on resources comprising pages or page images, graphic materials, moving image materials) with a fourth rule on other resources.
Second, the ISBD is used as the basis for description in almost all
modern cataloguing codes and its order and punctuation (mirroring as they do the MARC format) are accepted throughout the world. It is, therefore astounding to read that RDA is not structured around the areas and elements specified in ISBD (G) in the draft RDA. (ISBD(G)the basic ISBDwas drawn up in concert with the creation of AACR2 and subsequently adopted internationally.) Another RDA statementthat their rules do not represent a prescribed order for purposes of presentation of the datais a definitive rejection of the ISBD standard. One important consequence of this disastrous decision is that instead of presenting general rules first and then special rules and instead of following the universally accepted order of the ISBD, Part I of the RDA is divided into six chapters, each of which mixes up general and specific instructions. The first is General instructions (many of which are highly specific) and the subsequent chapters are grouped around the supposed functions of data elements as determined by the Laputan FRBR.
Third, RDA gives its examples without ISBD punctuation and with only
the element that is subject to the rulethat is completely out of context. This makes them virtually incomprehensible to cataloguing students and, in some cases, to any reader of the RDA. Earth to RDA: examples are supposed to illuminate rules, not confuse the reader.
(rules are pass to these people) are incomprehensible, internally inconsistent, and belied by their examples. I read more than 60 pages very carefully and came up with 15 pages of editorial errors.
VI
This is a sad time for cataloguing and the millions of users of library
cataloguesnot only do we have the appalling RDA but also the Library of Congress is talking openly of abandoning important elements of it national bibliographic service (including the LC List of subject headings), thereby letting down both the libraries in this country that depend on them and their international partners; and many LIS schools have all but abandoned the teaching of cataloguing. Wheres the outrage? Maybe it is Big Yellow Taxi time for cataloguingand we wont know what weve got til its gone. Michael Gorman University Librarian Emeritus California State University, Fresno & First editor, Anglo-American cataloguing rules, Second edition, 1978 & 1988
VII